Toronto-born prisoner Omar Khadr has been studying a curriculum devised by a team of 15 Edmonton professors, led by Arlette Zinck.

English professor Arlette Zinck at home in Edmonton with some of the correspondence and books she has shared with Omar Khadr. Through letters and lesson plans, she has been in Khadar's life for years, and travelled to Guantanamo Bay to teach him in person this spring.

There are cameras above and a bolt below to chain the student by the ankle to the floor.

It is here that Canadian Omar Khadr has been reciting Shakespeare, acing physics exams and sometimes chuckling at television sitcoms — all part of a program that will integrate him back into the world beyond the wire.

He has already read Can-lit favourites Who Has Seen the Wind by W.O. Mitchell and Obasan by Joy Kogawa, about the internment of Japanese-Canadians during World War II. Romeo and Juliet was a favourite to read aloud, with his 6’6” Pentagon lawyer playing the role of Juliet.

For some less formal lessons, the 25-year-old watched Little Mosque on the Prairie, a popular Canadian TV show about a Muslim community in a fictional prairie town.

The team of volunteer educators is led by Arlette Zinck, an associate English professor at King’s University College, a private college in Edmonton. She made two trips to the prison camp this spring to deliver the lessons in person.

Zinck talked about her experience for the first time this week, providing a glimpse into a less public side of the story that once again has Canadians talking.

She said that despite Khadr’s lack of formal education — his father uprooted him from Canada at a young age and moved to Pakistan and Afghanistan to live near Al Qaeda’s elite — she believes he is highly intelligent.

While math is Khadr’s passion — he told Zinck, “It’s like oil for my rusty brain” — she believes he has a “poetic temperament.”

Zinck’s interest in Khadr’s education started in 2008, she said, after she was inspired by a talk given by his former lawyer Dennis Edney. Edney later arranged to bring Khadr letters from Zinck and her students, and Khadr wrote them back.

The fact that there is a formal program to educate Khadr will likely elicit a chorus of boos from right-leaning Canadian pundits, even though the work is provided voluntarily.

Asked why she continues working with a prisoner who some Canadians hope remains locked in Guantanamo forever, Zinck talks about her Christian faith and her “duty as a human being.”

“If each was treated according to his deserts, who among us would escape whipping?” she said — a twist on a quote from Hamlet.

She said she also “prays regularly” for the children and widow of Christopher Speer, the U.S. soldier killed in a 2002 firefight with Khadr.

“This is not about the needs of one to the neglect of the other,” she said. “So to the many who say, ‘How can you be concerned about Omar? Haven’t you any Christian charity for the soldier’s wife?’ I say, you misunderstand me entirely.”

Zinck, 49, was one of the few witnesses to testify at Khadr’s hearing in 2010, where he admitted to throwing a grenade that fatally wounded Speer. Her canary yellow blazer, Haligonian accent (she’s originally from Halifax) and homespun demeanour as she talked about her correspondence with Khadr made for a jarring appearance in the austere military courtroom.

At one point she spoke about putting a toonie in a penalty jar, eliciting chuckles from the Canadians and confusion from Americans who didn’t know a “toonie” is a two-dollar coin.

Khadr’s Toronto lawyer Brydie Bethell, who was at Guantanamo during Zinck’s first visit in April, recalled the teacher’s unflappable air after their first night at Camp Justice, a stretch of asphalt at the U.S. naval base covered with khaki tents and air-conditioned trailers.

“While I threw my hair back into a ponytail and grabbed my jeans, out emerged Dr. Zinck in a smart wool suit, opaque tights and sturdy pumps,” she said. “It was only about 400 million degrees in the sun, and she marched confidently out into it with her briefcase, colour-coded tabs, binders and highlighters, ignoring the gravel.”

Clinical psychologist Katherine Porterfield, who works at New York’s Bellevue Hospital and has spent hundreds of hours working with Khadr over the years, said she was amazed at Zinck’s rapport with the prisoner after just a couple visits.

“She has made a good student out of him,” Porterfield said. “I watched her do a lesson on world religion . . . They both talked about the depths of their faiths and how they overlapped and where they didn’t. It was so interesting.”

One evening, Zinck assigned Khadr to compare themes in Obasan, the Hunger Games trilogy and Cormac McCarthy’s The Road — and she made sure his lawyers and Porterfield did the homework, too.

When Khadr made his presentation the next day, “He was so prepared and organized and thoughtful,” Zinck said. “He is a very morally centred person and could identify that in the literature. He just kicked their butts, frankly.”

Khadr started following Zinck’s curriculum after he pleaded guilty at his 2010 trial in return for an eight-year sentence and assurances from Canada that the federal government would “favourably” consider his return after one year.

U.S. Defence Secretary Leon Panetta signed off on Khadr’s release in April, but Ottawa has not set a timeline on his return and a small but vocal opposition is demanding that Canada refuse the transfer request.

Khadr’s lawyers broke their months of silence at a news conference Friday in Ottawa, standing alongside Senator Romeo Dallaire, in an effort to get the case back in the news and pressure Public Safety Minister Vic Toews to honour the plea deal.

But despite reports that Washington is eager to send Khadr back because his continued detention is complicating other Guantanamo cases, U.S. Ambassador David Jacobson told CTV’s Question Period on Sunday that “we cannot and do not want to hurry that process along.”